


The Littlest Matchmaker

by phinnia



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 08:58:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phinnia/pseuds/phinnia
Summary: Kids watch.   And they know everything.





	The Littlest Matchmaker

It was a slow night at Sandrine’s.    Tom was playing pool against himself.   Dalby and Chell were drinking at the bar.   Naomi was drawing something on a large piece of paper.  
  
She set down her crayons and toddled over to the pool table, looking up at him.   “How do you play that?”  she asked in her clear voice.  
  
“Well, you use this stick to knock the balls into the holes.   But you have to do it in a certain order.”  
  
She looked at the pool table thoughtfully.  “Oh.   Okay.”   Then she looked at him.   “You like Harry, don’t you?”  
  
Tom looked around, but no one seemed to have heard her.   Dalby and Chell were pretty absorbed in their cups and their conversation.     
  
“Sure I do.”   Tom smiles a complely fake smile.   “He’s my friend.”  
  
“No, that’s a lie smile.   My mom smiles that one when she says to Neelix how good his food is.”     
  
Caught, Tom sets his cue down and sighs.   “Listen, Naomi, it’s complicated.”  
  
“It’s not compl-er-tated.”   She drags Tom over to her table.   “It’s _easy_.   You like Harry, Harry likes you, you live happy ever after.”  
  
Unwittingly, Tom snorts.   “It’s not a Flotter story, Naomi.   This is real life.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean it’s gotta be compl-er-tated.   Neelix says it’s only as compl-er-tated as you make it.”  
  
Samamtha comes in then, so Naomi hands Tom her picture and runs across the room.  
  
Tom looks at the picture.   It seems to be him - he can see himself if he squints - playing pool.   That looked like a pool table.   And in the background, there’s someone that looks suspiciously like Harry.     
  
She was a pretty good artist for three and a half.   With crayons.    
  
  
Harry was at the resort a couple of days later.   He looked around for Tom, but he wasn’t there.   Then he spotted Naomi, playing in a pile of sand with some toys.     
  
“Hi, Naomi.”   He sat down beside her.   “Whatcha doing?   Building a castle?”  
  
“Building a ship.”   she chirps.   “Wanna help?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
The sand was warm and a little damp, good sand to build in.   Harry borrowed one of her shovels and started to pack the bucket full.     
  
They worked together in silence for a while.  
  
“You like Tom, right?”  
  
Harry was so startled he almost dropped the bucket.   “What did you just say?”  
  
“You like Tom, right?”  
  
That was what she’d said.   “Uh, Naomi, listen …”  
  
“You like him like my mom likes my dad.   ‘Cept you can’t have babies ‘cause you’re both boys, but that’s okay, you can still make each other happy.   Like Chell and Dalby do.”  
  
Harry blinks at her.   What?   “Does your mom know you know about all this stuff?”   He sputters when he can get his voice back.  
  
“Yup..”  she says.   “She told me about sex already.  She says I’m a-vanced ‘cause I’m half Katarian.”   She waves her hands in the air.  “Tom!   Come help Harry and me build a ship!”  
  
“Listen, Naomi …”  Tom says.   He’s fidgeting.  
  
“Please?”   She looked at him with wide blue eyes, so like his own.  
  
Tom crumbles.  He was always terrible around children.     “Oh, all right.”   he sighed, smiling a half smile.     
  
So Tom and Harry were stuck building a sand-ship to Naomi’s specifications.   And if she made them do most of the building, well, they were stronger and older and knew more about ships.  
  
Naomi wanted to supervise.   She was good at supervising.     
  
  
After that evening, Tom and Harry were Naomi’s favorite people for the next little while.    Not Tom, or Harry, but Tom _and_ Harry.   She had to have both of them watching her at once, or anyone else was fine.     
  
Samantha was starting to think Naomi had something up her sleeves, but kept it to herself.   After all, everybody had seen the looks they’d been giving each other when they thought the other one wasn’t looking.   Naomi was on to something.     
  
Then she said she wanted to go on shore leave with Tom and Harry.  
  
“Please, mommy?”   she begged.  “Please?”  
  
“Oh, all right.”   Sam sighed.   “But no taking her into any bars.  Or places of ill repute.   She’s only three and a half, you know.”  
  
“We won’t, we promise.”   Harry says.  
  
“I swear we won’t, Sammy.”   Tom is staring at his toes.   “Absolutely best behavior.”  
  
“Good.”   Naomi tugged at Harry’s legs, and Harry picked her up, and they beamed down.  
  
  
They materialized next to a playground.     
  
“Oooh, neat.”   Tom breathed.   “I’ve heard about these, but never actually seen one.”  
  
“What about it?”  
  
“No force fields to catch you.  The climbers are made of actual … wood or whatever the equivalent here is.   The equipment is made of metal and plastic.”     
  
“What happens if you fall?”   Harry looked concerned.     
  
“You fall, Harry.   You might actually break something.   You might have to learn your limits.”  Tom’s eyes were sparkling.   “Hey, watch!   Naomi, look!”   He climbs nimbly up a ladder and across a set of rungs on top, and then flips underneath so he’s hanging by his knees.     
  
His shirt falls down - or up or whatever it is - and Harry watches that out of the corner of his eye.  
  
“You’re going to kill yourself!”   He shouts.    
  
“Am not!”   Tom shouts back.  
  
“Are too!”  
  
“Am not!”  
  
“Are - oh, this is futile.”    
  
Naomi squeals, and Harry puts her down.   “Show me, show me!”   She runs over there.  
  
Tom flips down and lands on his feet.   “Okay.   Might be kinda hard, though.   First you have to learn to climb this ladder.   You want my help?”  
  
“I can do it.   I’m a good climber.”  
  
“Okay.   I’m just gonna watch, then.”   Tom sits behind her, close enough to catch her if she falls.     
  
Harry comes over and sits on the sand beside him.   “She _is_   a good climber.”    
  
“It’s all about testing your limits, Harry.”   Tom smiles up at her.   “It’s those Katarian genes.”  
  
“Okay, what do I do now?”   Naomi says.   “I’m at the top.”  
  
“Well, you can decide.”   Tom says.   “You can go across the ladder, or you can come down again.  Whatever you want to do.”  
  
“I’m gonna go across.”  
  
“Of course she’s going to go across.”  Harry laughed.   “You were always worrying your parents like this, weren’t you?”  
  
“Constantly.    All the time.   If you could climb it, I would climb it.  If you could fly it, I would fly it.   If you could sail it, I would sail it.”  
  
“You’re an adrenaline junkie.”  
  
“Guilty.”   Tom looks unrepentant, and Harry laughs.     
  
“Worst thing you ever did?”  
  
“Cave diving, probably.   In shark-infested waters, off Bermuda.”   He grins.   “Went with a couple of buddies and almost didn’t come back.”     
  
Harry thinks about a life without Tom.  It seems … incomplete.  
  
“Okay, I’m all the way across now.   Can you push me on the swings?”   Naomi's gotten down on the ground now.  
  
He gets up.   “Sure,.”  
  
Harry pushes Naomi for a while, and Tom pushes Naomi for a while, and she rides the slides and plays in the sand and goes on the spinny-thing, and then they take her back to the ship because it’s her bedtime.   She is full of stories for her mother.  
  
“Now what do you want to do, adrenaline junkie?”  Harry nudges Tom in the ribs.     
  
Tom breathes in, looks Harry in the eyes, and breathes out.   “Let’s drop by my place for a second.  Then I want to go back to that playground.”  
  
Harry raises an eyebrow, but okay, whatever.     
  
The playground is empty, because it’s dark.   The stars above them are twinkling.   Tom sits on the grass or whatever it is beside the climbers.     
  
“What are we doing here?”   Harry sits down next to him.    
  
“We’re testing our limits.   That’s what playgrounds are for, Harry.”   He takes out a half-full bottle of greenish alcohol he’d traded for at the last planet they went to.   “Want some?”  
  
“What does it taste like?”  
  
“It’s basically firewater.”  
  
Harry took a swallow and nearly choked on it.   “It really is.   Heavy on the fire, light on the water.”  
  
“Damn straight.”    Tom takes a drink of his own.  
  
They pass the bottle back and forth a few times.  
  
Then Tom slams the bottle down on the ground.  It bounces a bit.  “She was right, you know.”  
  
“Who was?”     
  
“Naomi.”    He pushed Harry backwards on the grass, climbed on top of him, and kissed him.    Harry tasted like the firewater, which tasted like alcohol and algae, and lust.   Tom swept his tongue along Harry’s lips and they parted easily, almost like he was ready for this.    
  
Could he have been ready for this?  
  
Harry flips him over, and they roll across the bottle, uncaring.    
  
“Think you can top me?”   Tom grins.  
  
“I _know_   I can top you.”  Harry smiles back.     
  
“Like to see you try.”  
  
“Is that a challenge?”    
  
“Hell yes it is.”   Tom purrs from the back of his throat.     
  
“Then I accept.”   Harry bites Tom on the throat, hard enough to bruise, and Tom grins up at him wildly.   Oh, _yeah._    
  
Fumbling hands race over clothes, flinging them every which way.   Skin is revealed, kissed, caressed, scratched with short nails.   Lubricant is found in Tom’s pocket, and used - a long, slow, slide, and a groan.   Murmurs.   Moans, at first hesitant and then less so.  Thrusts.   More murmurs.   And finally, a long moan, and then a deep, contented sigh.  
  
“Told you.”   Harry murmurs, trying not to sound too amused with himself.  
  
“You did.”   Tom concentrates on breathing.   “And you did quite the job of it, too.  Now, just one more thing.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Where the hell are my clothes?”  
  
Laughter.  
  
  
“You have an owie.”   Naomi points at Tom’s neck.  
  
Tom tries not to blush and mostly succeeds.   “Yup.   I do.”  
  
“Does it hurt?”  
  
“Not really, no.”  
  
“Should the Doctor fix it?”  
  
“No, it’s okay.”    Harry comes over and kisses Tom’s neck.   “I’ve got it.  I’ll kiss it all better.   See?  All better.”  
  
“Oh, good.”   Naomi nods and walks off.  
  
“I wonder who her next victims are.”    Harry murmurs into Tom’s ear.     
  
Tom looks through the resort crowd.   “Looks like the Captain and Chakotay.   Think we should warn them?”  
  
“Why bother?”   Harry grins.   “She’s got it handled quite nicely.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
